Los Angeles Fashion Week, under new ownership since the beginning of the year, hopes to make this season, October 6-9, a turning point for the event.
This time around, only around half of the designers will stage typical shows, while the rest will choose to present their collections through immersive experiences and parties during the four-day event that starts on Thursday.
“All these different brands show up in their own way,” said Ciarra Pardo, co-founder of N4XT Experiences and president of LA Fashion Week. Earlier in the year, the new company acquired LA Fashion Week for an undisclosed sum from the fashion show’s founder, Arthur Chipman, who has stayed on as producer.
One such different way of showcasing fashion will take place at the Fleur du Mal presentation. The New York lingerie and ready-to-wear brand partners with House of Yes, a New York company that is part nightclub, part circus theater , to create different activations. “You can be standing there having a cocktail, listening to music, and all of a sudden there are two actors wearing Fleur du Mal,” Pardo said. “They are creating a wild, beautiful and amazing boudoir experience.”
Pardo’s vision is to rely more on off-runway events, emerging designers and technology to renew the biannual shows.
With that in mind, LA Fashion Week will no longer be held at the Petersen Automotive Museum, its home since 2018.
He is moving to various places. The two main locations are in Hollywood and a third is in a West Hollywood hotel.
Most of the shows will be held at the Lighthouse ArtSpace on Sunset Boulevard. The building was home to Amoeba Records until it moved a few years ago. Recently, the structure, not far from the historic Cinerama Dome, has been used to display immersive art installations by Vincent Van Gogh, King Tut, and Frida Kahlo.
“The Lighthouse is a 360-degree full immersion experience from floor to ceiling,” said Pardo, noting that images can be projected onto the walls.
The Petersen Automotive Museum was a great place, he explained, but it had its space limitations. He wouldn’t have accommodated the 500 or so people who signed up for the opening night show of AnOnlyChild, which former Public School designer Maxwell Osborne launched last year in New York. He recently showed his Spring 2023 collection at New York Fashion Week and will show it again in Los Angeles.
Other brands on the runway will include Gypsy Sport, Los Angeles designer Rio Uribe’s glam streetwear line rooted in Chicano culture, which debuted in October 2021 at the Petersen Museum and has shown in New York in past seasons.
Other brands include Attachments, premium jean line Revice Denim, upcycled Sami Miro Vintage and Demobaza, a futuristic Bulgarian line that recently created a “Dune”-inspired collection, which closes the fashion event on Sunday. Also on the show: Filipino designers Francis Libiran, Avel Bacudio and Chris Nick and Indonesian brand Xiao Fen Couture, which has been shown at previous LAFW events.
Another activation will see actress Issa Rae partnering with Delta Air Lines to launch “Issa Rae: Delta Runway Runway Collection,” a line of fashion and accessories, in a hangar.
About 25 to 30 percent of the designers showing up at LA Fashion Week are from Los Angeles, Pardo said.
Also new to the reimagined event are a handful of fireside talks, panels and a masterclass taking place at Citizen News, a revamped former newspaper across the street from the Lighthouse ArtSpace, which is also home to the lively restaurant Mother Wolf.
Debates and talks will range from “Building Businesses with Heart” to “The Future of Fashion,” with speakers including fashion personality Joe Zee, model/activist Bethann Hardison, artist Donald Robertson, and actress/influencer Danielle Lauder.
The sponsors largely come from the worlds of technology and sustainability. They include Logitech, Bolt, Ray-Ban Stories, Mercedes-Benz of Los Angeles, Red Bear Winery and real estate company Delos.
LA has had several fashion weeks over the years with mixed results. Most have lasted a few years and then fizzled out.
One of the most notable efforts was organized by IMG, which teamed up with local commercial photo studio and cosmetic company Smashbox Studios, started by brothers Dean and Davis Factor, great-grandsons of legendary Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor.
It was one of the best-organized events and ran for five years at the large photo studio in Culver City, California, but never raised enough money to continue, organizers said, closing in 2008.
Arthur Chipman, who came from Canada, where he said he was the director of development for Vancouver Fashion Week, launched Los Angeles Fashion Week in 2015 after trademarking the name.
His first show was held at Union Station, a historic downtown train station that is an architectural gem with its wooden ceilings and huge Art Deco chandeliers.
The fashion event moved around the city until finding a stable location in 2018 at the Petersen Automotive Museum, with its vintage cars and wide spaces, giving it more staying power. LA Fashion Week was held there last April, when Greg Lauren drew Usher and Chance the Rapper to his front row.
Still, most of the commercially successful LA-based couture brands have chosen to show elsewhere, but have sometimes returned to Los Angeles to host one-off shows, such as Rhugi Villasenor’s Rhude runway show at a mansion in Beverly Hills, and Mike Amiri’s collaboration with Wes Lang staging. at Milk Studios in Hollywood.
Despite Los Angeles Fashion Week’s rocky past, the city’s sunshine and celebrity-studded landscape has also drawn megabrands to the city and its suburbs, including Dior, which showed its men’s resort collection at Venice Beach in May, and Gucci, which closed Hollywood Boulevard for a show in November 2021.
On October 13, Ralph Lauren will hold its first West Coast fashion show at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, presenting its men’s and women’s collection for spring 2023.
All of these fashion experiences inspired Pardo, the former Creative Director of Fenty, to form N4XT Experiences earlier this year with Spring Place President and Co-Founder Imad Izemrane, and entertainment and finance veterans Marcus Ticotin and Keith Abell.
Its goal is to cultivate emerging designers and global brands in a fashion event that incorporates more technology and supports sustainability. “I don’t think until now,” Pardo said, “it was still time for a platform like this to take off. But there is a cool renaissance and change coming in Los Angeles.”
Source: news.google.com